Is war becoming liquid?Consequences of the proliferation of modern military technology for the warfare of autocratic states and non-state armed groups

这项名为《通向液态战争的道路？》的项目从2020年10月开始运行，已经批准了三年。该项目考察了现代军事技术的扩散--例如弹道导弹、精确炸弹和无人机--如何改变专制国家和非国家武装组织的战争。根据Zygmunt Bauman对“液态现代性”中领土失去意义的思考，该项目发展了固体(以领土为中心)和液体(以目标为中心)战争的类型，并特别研究了沙特阿拉伯和阿拉伯联合酋长国(阿联酋)以及胡塞和伊斯兰国(IS)的战争。作为一个重要的第一个结果，该项目已经能够证明，与文献中与民主国家(主要是西方国家)之间的战争的主要联系相反，高度专制的海湾君主制沙特阿拉伯和也门的胡塞也依赖于液态战争的做法。这里要求的继续项目扩展了基本研究问题：现代军事技术的扩散如何改变威权国家战争的空间维度？对另外三个国家：a)俄罗斯；b)土耳其；c)中国。这将使在该项目中获得的见解建立在更广泛的经验基础上，以便就专制战争的“清算”这一论题的范围得出结论。延续项目的核心成果将以文章的形式发表在一份同行评议的英文期刊上，作为以“独裁战争”为主题的特刊的一部分。

The project 'On the road to liquid warfare?', which has been running since October 2020 and has been approved for three years, examines how the proliferation of modern military technology for warfare at a distance - e.g. ballistic missiles, precision bombs and drones - transforms the warfare of autocratic states and non-state armed groups. Drawing on Zygmunt Bauman's reflections on the loss of meaning of territory in 'liquid modernity', the project has developed a typology of solid (territorially-focused) and liquid (target-focused) warfare, and has examined in particular the warfare of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as the Huthi and the Islamic State (IS). As an important first result, the project has already been able to show that - contrary to the predominant association in the literature of warfare from a distance with democratic (mostly Western) states - the highly autocratic Gulf monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the Huthi in Yemen rely on practices of liquid warfare, too. The continuation project requested here extends the basic research question 'how does the proliferation of modern military technology for warfare at a distance change the spatial dimension of warfare by authoritarian states?' to three additional states: a) Russia; b) Turkey; and c) China. This will put the insights gained in the project on a broader empirical basis so that conclusions can be drawn about the scope of the thesis of the ‘liquidisation’ of autocratic warfare. The central results of the continuation project will be published in the form of an article in a peer-reviewed English-language journal as part of a special issue on the topic of ‘autocratic warfare’.